South Coast

Watch for cornices, especially in the middle of a warm, sunny day.

Good

Thursday, Friday and Saturday are all expected to be dry, with some clear skies when you get to higher terrain, and the potential for valley fog lower down. Freezing levels are expected to climb to around 1600 m on Thursday, although there is the possibility of an above freezing level layer between 2000 and 2500 m, which will keep things warm in the alpine. Similar freezing levels are expected for Friday, then cooling on Saturday. Winds mostly light and variable.

On Monday, a size 2 persistent slab avalanche was remotely triggered from a distance of about 100m in the far north of the region (Goldbridge area). The avalanche occurred at about 2300m in a wind-loaded area and failed on surface hoar buried about 70cm below the surface. The remote triggering points to the touchy nature of the instability in this area. No other recent avalanches have been reported.

Up to 50 cm of settled storm snow has been saturated by rain up to about 2100m. Most surfaces now sport a hard frozen crust. At the highest elevations you might find dense, stubborn wind slabs in lee terrain. New cornice development has also been noted. The older storm snow overlies a hard crust and/or surface hoar layer which formed in early January. The bond at this interface will be largely elevation dependant as rain may have penetrated the snowpack enough to dissolve the crust in many areas. In the north of the region, snowpack tests indicate this interface is still sensitive to triggering in some areas.Deeper snowpack weaknesses seem to have become unreactive, and should become even less of a concern now the upper snow surface is largely frozen.